Public Safety Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Ray Boisvert]

Certainly in comparison to warrants for law enforcement, the mechanisms are different. Part VI Criminal Code warrants have different requirements for reporting back—even disclosing to the person under investigation that they were the subject of a warranted activity. Those requirements are absent in national security warrants for very good reasons that we don't have enough time to go through, but there is no doubt that there is not the same accountability. However, rest assured, as we've seen with a couple of warrants that are referred to as DIFTs—domestic interception of foreign telecommunications—for targets involving a CSIS and CSE collaborative effort, the Federal Court went back and made a very clear pronouncement that it was not pleased with one part of that activity. So there is opportunity and there are some forms of review.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Our time has now expired. I would certainly thank our witnesses at this time. I hope you have had, if not an enjoyable time, certainly an interesting time here today, and we certainly appreciate your comments and your counsel.

We will now suspend for two minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, we are now back in session for our second hour of testimony and questions and answers.

The chair will briefly introduce the witnesses we have before us today. From the Heritage Foundation, we have Mr. Steven Bucci, director of the Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy. From the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, we have David Cape, chair, and Shimon Fogel, chief executive officer. From the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, we have Ziyaad Mia, chair of the advocacy and research committee, and Mueed Peerbhoy, vice-chair of the legal advocacy committee.

Apologies if I did not pronounce your names exactly as they should be, and please feel free—

[Ziyaad Mia, Member, Legal Advocacy Committee, Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association]

I am not the chair of the committee, nor the vice-chair. I'm a member of the committee. I don't want to take credit for—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine, thank you very much. The chair stands corrected.

As is tradition, each group will give up to 10 minutes of testimony. The chair and the committee would appreciate if you could shorten that as much as possible in order to give us more time for questions and answers.

Without any further ado, we'll lead off with Mr. Bucci.

Carry on, sir.

[Dr. Steven Bucci, Director, Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy, Heritage Foundation]

Mr. Chairman and members, thank you for inviting us to address the committee. I am Dr. Steven Bucci, the director of the Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy at the Heritage Foundation. This is David Inserra, my lead analyst for homeland security issues. The Heritage Foundation is a non-profit and non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C., and what we're about to provide is our own opinions and should not be construed as official policy of the Heritage Foundation.

I'm humbled to be asked to comment on Canadian Bill C-51, Anti-terrorism Act, 2015. A Canadian friend kiddingly said, “Ah, you're coming up here to explain our law to us.” Clearly that's not our intent. The U.S. has gone through exactly this sort of debate, and we hope to give some additional illumination of these issues based on the American experience. Canada is our closest ally, friend, and partner. I recognize that and I earnestly seek to add to that bond.

I'm going to address a few general issues, then my colleague will touch on some more specifics. The threat of terrorism is real and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, that threat has grown. Today that threat is from radical Islamist extremists. Tomorrow it could be from others. But the key is that it's not hype; it's real. Canada sadly found that out last year during the attacks in Quebec and here in Ottawa.

The challenge we face is that this particular enemy is coming after our peoples solely because they resent our freedom and tolerance, but they are very good at leveraging those same issues to their advantage against us. This threat comes from a very small, misguided part of the Islamic community, but even the small minority puts us at risk and must be prepared for.

Security issues like the ones raised in Bill C-51 are particularly tough for pluralistic democracies such as ours. Our leaders in both countries, regardless of political orientation, are responsible for the physical protection of our people and interests but must also always protect our cherished civil liberties and constitutional rights. Any and every law we enact must achieve a balance between these two pillars. Too far in one direction and our citizens bleed and die. Too far in the other and the spirits of our nations die. Neither is acceptable. But even that is not enough. There must be strong oversight today and long-term auditing and monitoring to ensure that a well-intentioned law today is not misused sometime in the future.

My review of Bill C-51 leads me to conclude that this is just that sort of good faith attempt to achieve a balance between greater physical protection without loss of civil liberties. In the various sections, there's a judicious expansion of info-sharing and law enforcement authorities but in each there are also provisions for recourse and appeals. There is transparency and openness. It uses the minimum secrecy needed for effective security, and there is a wide use of warrants and judicial oversight. In short, this bill seems to balance security and liberty.

Before I turn the microphone over to David, I would also like to mention something. In the U.S. right after 9/11, we went through the same sort of epiphany that your country has so recently gone through. We tried to do a balancing act between these two pillars. Over time, we involved two different presidencies of widely different politics and attitudes, multiple congresses with leadership trading hands between the parties, and the entire federal judiciary, all involved in different sorts of oversight and decision making. A line of balance was drawn.

However, after the Edward Snowden releases, it became clear that at least a non-trivial number of American citizens didn't really like where that line had been drawn. In the United States now, we're sorting out how to re-wicker that and achieve that balance. I only raise this, not because Bill C-51 has similar programs to the ones that were problematic in the United States, but to encourage as much transparency in your process as possible. The transparency will give you the effectiveness without having the fight down the road. Canada and Canadians deserve that, and in the end it will benefit your great people who are our brothers and sisters.

I'd like to ask my colleague David to take the rest of our time.

[David Inserra, Lead, Homeland Security Policy and North America, Heritage Foundation]

Thanks, Steve.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

You have two minutes, sir. Oh, sorry, I confused your time with our questioning time. You actually have closer to five minutes.

[David Inserra]

Members of the committee, it's my honour to be here today. As Steve mentioned, I'll take the remaining time to go over some of the specifics and use the U.S.'s recent experience to shine some light on specific policies.

My understanding of the bill is that it would enable most government institutions of Canada to share information for security purposes with those institutions that have law enforcement or security responsibilities. So, this is not the collection of additional data or additional programs, but this is merely breaking down the barriers between government organizations so that security organizations can access lawfully obtained information that is already in the government's possession. This policy makes eminently good sense and is similar to U.S. efforts following 9/11 to break down the silos of information, to ensure that security personnel have the best information available to them. Canada seems to have a robust set of privacy laws that govern the storage, use, and sharing of information, and oversight by a privacy commissioner and other review committees, somewhat analogous to the way the U.S. has installed privacy officers throughout government agencies. It's important that this new level of sharing be overseen by the privacy commissioner and the appropriate review commissions to ensure that sharing is done in accordance with the law.

Next, Bill C-51 tries to build on passenger protect, the Canadian no-fly list. Currently, the is authorized to deny transportation or require extra screening of any individual who is believed to be a threat to aviation security. Bill C-51 would expand this authority and also be used to stop or screen individuals who seek to fly somewhere else to engage in terrorism. In the U.S., we have a similar system with no-fly and selectee watch lists, but it is primarily focused on aviation security, not preventing terrorist travel. Bill C-51 seeks to combat such travel, and given the widespread concern about terrorists travelling to Syria and other locations in the world to commit terrorist acts, this addition is wise.

Additionally, Bill C-51 provides clear avenues for administrative and judicial recourse, an important thing since the appeals process for the U.S. No Fly list was found unconstitutional this past summer because of how difficult the process was to use. Bill C-51 would also make it easier for Canadian officials to stop terrorists before they strike. Bill C-51 would make it illegal to advocate for terrorism, and it would allow terrorist propaganda to be seized with judicial adjudication. The bill would also make it easier for law enforcement to seek an arrest warrant or conditions of recognizance against a suspected terrorist if such actions would “likely...prevent the carrying out of the terrorist activity.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Inserra, I'm very sorry, but we have a call to vote in the House.

Oh, that is just simply the House opening. The chair stands corrected again; thank goodness.

[David Inserra]

Bill C-51 is looking to increase the ability of law enforcement to stop terrorists before they strike, as I was mentioning. This includes expanding the ability to require various sureties and conditions of recognizance, including the surrender of one's passport and the requirement to remain in a given geographic area, similar to the way it could be used in a law enforcement sense now. Since these actions would be done with judicial oversight and approval, these reforms seem to balance the need for security with the need for due process and civil rights.

Since multiple sections of this bill would make it more difficult for radicalized individuals to travel, you should also consider how the government and civil society can deradicalize or prevent the further radicalization of individuals who are no longer allowed to leave Canada.

Finally, Bill C-51 not only provides CSIS with the authority to collect and analyze intelligence on threats to Canada, but it also allows it to “take measures, within or outside Canada, to reduce the threat”. Such actions are subject to judicial oversight and approval as well as review by the Security Intelligence Review Committee. Some have suggested that more oversight is needed. This is, perhaps, one of the most significant changes in the law, as it seems to me to reverse the decision Canada made following the McDonald commission to split intelligence from security actions. In the U.S. experience, adding a new and different responsibility to an organization can be a challenge. For example, the FBI is the primary organization dedicated to counterterrorism investigations. Following 9/11, it was required to increase its intelligence capabilities, resulting in the creation of a national security branch under the directorate of intelligence. The FBI has a certain culture, a culture of special agents and law enforcement that drives it to investigate past wrongdoing, build a case, and seek a conviction. Intelligence, however, looks at threats that could be coming down the line and seeks to use unclear pieces of intelligence to prevent threats and gain additional intelligence. It's the difference between an analyst and an agent. Right now, the agent culture is still very dominant at the FBI. This isn't to say the FBI hasn't made great strides. It has. It's important to recognize that adding a new responsibility to CSIS will not necessarily be easy or quick, even though it may be necessary and important.

Overall, we found this bill to have sound principles and policies. This bill seeks to better share information and prevent the commission of terrorism. We hope that our testimony in providing the U.S. experience will inform your work on this bill.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the courtesy and the pickup in tempo, so thank you.

We'll now go to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

You have the floor, Mr. Cape.

[David Cape, Chair, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I was in Washington on Monday and Tuesday with the World Jewish Congress, so our American friends are here. I want to say that at Congress and numerous meetings we had with legislators, they pointed out that Canada was a beacon leading the legislative approach to promoting safety from terrorism in society. It certainly felt good as a Canadian to be in the U.S., and thank you for being here with us.

I am pleased to be here today, along with Shimon Fogel, to speak on behalf of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada.

Jews are consistently targeted by hate and bias-related crimes in Canada at a rate higher than any other identifiable group. While this ancient toxic hatred is not unique to our country, it is rightly constrained to the margins of liberal democratic societies such as ours. However, anti-Semitism is increasingly manifesting in brutal acts of terrorism inspired by warped Islamist ideology, as we've all seen in the recent tragic events in Belgium, France, and Denmark. When terrorists strike, it is often against the Jewish community. There is a significant justified fear among many Canadian Jews that what has taken place in European cities is equally possible here.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the recent video posted by al Shabaab calling for an attack on the West Edmonton Mall. Some of you may be surprised to learn why this particular target was selected, as opposed to, say, the Rideau Centre. The West Edmonton Mall was chosen specifically because its owners are Jewish, a fact that understandably heightens anxiety in our community.

We are grateful that the current government and its predecessors have taken significant steps to protect Canadians from terrorist violence. The communities at risk security infrastructure program and the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act are recent, integral initiatives that have helped make our lives safer.

Our vibrant community is diverse, full of divergent points of view, and represented across the political spectrum. There is, however, a significant consensus in support of additional measures to counter terrorism in general, and in support of Bill C-51 in particular.

I'm going to concentrate my remarks on four aspects of the bill that we have found through our community consultations to have particular resonance.

The first element of Bill C-51 that I would like to discuss is the provision for the seizure of terrorist propaganda. This seizure would empower the courts to order the removal or seizure of vicious material often encouraging the murder of Jews. Removing this heinous propaganda, particularly from the Internet, would limit its capacity to radicalize Canadians and inspire attacks.

Again, at our recent meetings of the World Jewish Congress, we had members from Europe, and I must say they live in fear. They fear all that terrorist promoting on the Internet, the jihadi terrorist websites, is really out of control and needs to be removed. They speculate or wonder why we're able to remove heinous criminal things like pedophilia from the Internet, but not terrorist rantings.

Our community is committed to promoting civil liberty and free expression, but neither can be absolute. While the seizure of terrorist propaganda would place limits on acceptable speech, it is in our view a legitimate and appropriate restriction, demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

We have seen increasingly numerous examples of attacks that are inspired by the messages of terrorist groups, but that are not the result of direct calls for specific actions. The seizure of terrorist propaganda would address this trend, and contribute to efforts to counter radicalization in Canada.

The second element is the criminalization of the advocacy or promotion of terrorism. This is an important complement to the seizure of terrorist propaganda. Existing criminal laws on incitement are very specific and require an incident that will likely cause a breach of the peace. Radicalization is a cumulative phenomenon, with no single input necessarily leading directly to an attack.

As we have seen, individuals are increasingly perpetrating terrorist attacks on their own initiative, not due to any single call for action. This provision addresses these limitations and enables the arrest of those fuelling extremist violence. Some critics have argued that this provision is too broad. However, terrorist recruiters and plotters have likely already taken note of the limitations of existing legislation and adjusted their approach accordingly. This enables them to continue encouraging attacks while technically remaining on the right side of the law.

Recently, a founding member of al Qaeda turned MI-5 double agent, Aimen Dean, recounted to the BBC his experience skirting U.K. laws prohibiting incitement to terrorism. He was free to give theological justification promoting al Qaeda's actions without violating the law. But he noted, “You can't specifically urge someone to go. You can't specifically call for an attack. You have to be clever about how you phrase your words.” The appeal by al Shabaab was deemed by the RCMP to be “a very general comment. It wasn't a specific threat.”

Bill C-51 would make general calls for terrorism offences a criminal offence, making it more difficult for individuals or groups to encourage attacks against Canadians. It would deny to those who are intent on inspiring, radicalizing, or recruiting Canadians to commit acts of terror a legal way to be clever but dangerous with their words.

While the seizure of terrorist propaganda and the criminalization of advocacy or promotion of terrorism are important tools, they are not by themselves sufficient to confront the twin scourges of terrorism and radicalization. We recommend the establishment of a parallel national de-radicalization program focused on marginalizing violent extremism within affected communities. Such a program could work with both communities targeted like ours by terrorism and those grappling with radicalization. Our community stands ready to do its part in the endeavour to ensure that the Canada we love stays safe for all its residents.

This program would complement C-51 and would help communities battling radicalization to empower moderate voices and de-legitimize hate. Combined, Bill C-51 and a national de-radicalization program could go a long way toward preventing individuals from choosing the path of terrorism in the first place.

The third element I wish to discuss is oversight. CSIS's expanding role is an important modernization that will further enable the disruption of terrorism before Canadian lives are in peril. However, just as Canadians stand to benefit from a more robust counter-terrorism that emphasizes prevention, a concurrent and measured increase in the review of CSIS's activities is necessary.

SIRC has done a good job with a limited mandate and even more limited resources. Both should be expanded.

Oversight of CSIS was one of the most cited issues noted during our community consultations. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of time, I am not able to speak about all seven of our specific, concrete recommendations.

I will mention two and invite you to refer to the written brief we have submitted to the committee, which describes all of our proposals in detail.

We believe that SIRC's mandate should be strengthened to enable review of CSIS's activities across government agencies. This would render all CSIS operations accountable to the same degree. We also believe that the chair of SIRC should be an officer of Parliament, required to provide regular reports to Parliament on its review activities.

The fourth and final element of Bill C-51 that I wish to discuss is privacy. We support empowering government departments to share information more effectively for security purposes. However, some of the language in the proposed security of Canada information sharing act could be adjusted to establish sufficient limitations and safeguards to ensure that intrusion into the privacy of Canadians is not abused.

Specifically, we recommend that the bill be amended to constrain information sharing to threats to the security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act and that the scope of sharing stop short of “to any person, for any purpose” set out in proposed section 6.

Additionally, the committee should consider updates to the Privacy Act to make government institutions more accountable going forward.

Before I conclude, I would like to suggest one more item for your consideration. Marc Garneau's private member's Bill C-510 is currently before Parliament and has been endorsed by all parties. This important legislation would extend hate crime penalties beyond houses of worship to schools and community centres. I encourage the members of this committee to consider dropping the zero in its number and including the contents of Bill C-510 as an amendment to Bill C-51. Barring that, I hope you will work to ensure that Mr. Garneau's private member's bill passes quickly.

In conclusion, Bill C-51 contains important measures that will help to counter radicalization and prevent terrorist attacks. While we believe there are areas for improvement, this legislation is necessary and beneficial to update Canada's anti-terrorism tool kit.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

We will now hear from the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association representatives.

[Ziyaad Mia]

Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been before many committees, including this one, in the past. The Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association has testified before committees on national security and human rights matters in the past, and we're happy to do so today.

My name is Ziyaad Mia. I'm a member of our Legal Advocacy Committee. With me is Mr. Mueed Peerbhoy. He is the vice-chair of that committee.

We want to thank Professors Roach and Forcese for their work, which I think is a contribution to the study of this bill and has been a public service that has been very helpful not only to our organization but to many others as well.

We share your concerns about national security and also about rights. We don't think they are mutually exclusive. As the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association—some of you on the committee have seen me before—we're not opposed to taking reasonable and proactive measures to deal with threats to the security of Canada, including terrorism as well as crime in terms of the criminal law. But we think that when we do those things, they need to meet a number of criteria.

I'll give you three main criteria: the measures need to be demonstrably justified; consistent with the rule of law and the charter of rights; and if this bill in particular is about terrorism, it actually needs to make us safer.

Bill C-51 is fundamentally flawed. It does not meet these criteria. It is a Faustian bargain—a trade with the devil, if you will—whereby we are trading our rights to gain a false sense of security. We shouldn't be trading rights to get security; we should be getting both. Indeed, we'll be less safe, as you've heard from many witnesses, including Mr. Boisvert, who said they are overworked at CSIS. We'll be chasing red herrings—chasing people who shouldn't be chased, harvesting information that shouldn't be harvested—while the real terrorists and the real threats might slip through the cracks and hurt all of us. It doesn't make us safer at the end of the day.

I've sent my written submissions in to the committee. I think they're being translated, and unfortunately I can't give you a unilingual copy. You will get them at some point soon. I'm going to talk about a few things today. The written submissions go into much more detail, so I encourage you to please look at them, if you get a chance. They are available on our website as well.

The information sharing piece especially troubles me. It's quite complex. I have also taken a minute to do up a little chart for all of you in the submission, and it's available here, if you want it today, just to get a handle on how information flows. Bill C-51 raises many unanswered questions. In the submission, I think I list about 40 or 50 questions. To me as a lawyer, it constitutes a big question mark. I don't know—it's not clear, essentially. So I'll ask you to look at those, please.

Bill C-51 has been styled and marketed as a bill about terrorism. In fact, it's the “Anti-terrorism Act 2015”. But it is not a bill about anti-terrorism. This is a broad national security bill that creates a bit of a nanny state. Professor Forcese called it the largest national security bill he has seen.

I'll walk through a few of the provisions, knowing that my time is limited, and I will invite your questions for discussion.

Let me talk about the information sharing portions.

Anyone in intelligence will tell you that finding a terrorist is finding a needle in a haystack. Information sharing is so vague and broadly drafted that we are adding about 16 truckloads of hay. Those of you from the prairies—I know that if Ms. Nawaz were here.... I'll tell you, it's probably not a good idea to add more hay to that hay pile to look for that needle. We need to get at the needle and not add more hay, and SCISA is doing that. It creates a whole-of-government information sharing regime with no supervision or control, absolutely none.

This is a recipe for disaster, as we know from the Arar affair. In fact, I think Bill C-51's information sharing is actually anti-Arar. Professors Roach and Forcese say that it has Arar amnesia. It allows for information sharing and manipulation across multiple points in government and has distributed decision points across government. You know that, when people are making decisions across government, it can lead to trouble, because there is no consistency and there are no meaningful safeguards.

Bill C-51 creates the foundation for big data gathering and analysis. It is not simply the information, but the manipulation, sharing, and predictive analysis that is the issue. Ed Snowden talked about that.

The broad information sharing also extends to sharing with foreign governments, those with questionable human rights records. We could be sharing information on Canadians with governments such Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

We know the risks according to Snowden of what happens when we share information broadly and we do big data analytics.

In today's world all of you have a smart phone in your pocket and you know that if you make a horrible tweet, you can't reel it back. When we make a mistake in security information sharing and we share my information or yours with a Saudi regime and there's a mistake in it, you can't reel that back, you can't pull that back. We can fix it here, but once that information is out, you can't get it back.

We've heard from many people that we shouldn't be worried about Bill C-51 because if you're not a terrorist, what do you have to worry about? Consider what types of non-violent activity...this is the lawful protest and dissent exemption.

The criminal code doesn't include the word “lawful”, so there is an inconsistency in the law. Why does one act have “lawful” included and another doesn't? Unlawful doesn't mean criminal, terrorist activity. You and I both agree that we need to get those people who do those sorts of things and we need to prosecute.

We just celebrated this month the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's Selma march in the civil rights movement. I encourage you to look at this. They were arrested. Dr. King, Reverend Abernathy, and student leaders were all arrested. For what? Illegal activity, unlawful assembly, and illegal marching. King was a Gandhian. I'm a South African by birth and Gandhi spent a lot of time there. Gandhi was arrested for the same things. King and Gandhi were involved in illegal, unlawful activities, but they were non-violent.

The problem is that we're dragging people into the national security dragnet. Yes, if someone trespasses charge, them for trespassing, but they shouldn't be dragged into the national security dragnet. That's the problem. Then their information may end up somewhere else.

We've been told by many that there is oversight—what are you talking about? They say there is oversight in this bill because there is judicial oversight. It's either incorrect or disingenuous because section 9 of the proposed security of Canada information sharing act gives the government immunity from negligent harms done from information sharing. That breeds impunity. The future Arars won't even have the recourse he had.

Let's talk a bit about CSIS and the reduction of threats to the security of Canada. These are new unprecedented police powers. This essentially undoes everything the McDonald commission told us about. It takes us back to the pre-McDonald commission era. The whole point of having the McDonald commission was to separate intelligence and police work because of the mistakes and abuses that had happened, the illegal activities by the RCMP security service in Quebec against sovereignists and others. We will repeat those mistakes again. People may not have liked sovereignists, but they had a legal right to do what they were doing and to say what they were saying. I don't agree with it, but they have that right so they shouldn't be abused by the police. We're opening a can of worms here by doing that.

Unfortunately, it will also strengthen silos. I think, Mr. Boisvert, referred to this a bit, that CSIS will try to do things on its own. That I have a problem with because if we're trying to integrate—and I think there should be some integration and sharing of information—and if we're giving CSIS these disruption powers, what we're doing is giving them police powers. You know what institutional mindsets will say. They will say, “Why do we need to call the RCMP? We'll just finish the job ourselves”. What they should be doing is intelligence gathering, building the case, and then flipping it to the RCMP for enforcement and trial, which builds confidence. We saw the Toronto 18 and the VIA Rail trial. That was an open and public case that builds confidence and was built on evidence. That is what we need.

I'll talk a little bit about CSIS's law-breaking warrants, which is what I call them. They're open ended. Courts are said to be a protection in this case, but they're not. This happens in complete secret ex parte hearings. There is no ongoing supervision from that judge, and worse, it turns the role of the judiciary completely upside down. This is not the role of judges in our system. Security certificate judges have said that they're uncomfortable with secret processes. This takes them further and conscripts them into the illegal acts and dirty business that CSIS will engage in.

To say that judges are the oversight.... The other issue that's troubling in that case is that CSIS has a track record—I'm not making this stuff up here—of misleading courts and misleading the Security Intelligence Review Committee, whose last report says so, and breaching constitutional rights. That's all on the record, its lack of candour with the courts.

I'll wrap up, Mr. Chair. I'll quickly say the secrecy in the no-fly list is very problematic; it's a Kafkaesque approach. Mr. Inserra said the U.S. no-fly list was struck down, again for that opaque process. This is going to fail, I think, on the same grounds.

With regard to criminalizing expression, I'm 110% in support of what the Prime Minister said about Charlie Hebdo and support for free speech, but we can't criminalize speech that's not close to criminality at home. I agree, and am also offended by speech that's hateful and anti-Semitic, but it needs to be close to criminality. We live in a liberal democracy. We allow vulgar and offensive and unpatriotic speech to prevail if it's not criminal.

I will wrap up by telling you that we're recommending not moving forward with this bill. We recommend that we first fix the national security operations and put some supervision in. Look at the Arar inquiry and other inquiries that have told us to do that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Sir, you're well over time. I'm sorry.

[Ziyaad Mia]

Okay.

We look forward to a respectful discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much. We thank you for your contributions.

We will now go to a round of questioning. They'll be reduced to five minutes.

Ms. James, you're up first.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I will be passing my time to Mr. Norlock.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Norlock.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I was hoping to have Ms. Nawaz here, but since this is televised, I'm sure she'll be able to see my comments.

When we talk about how someone's dressed, I need to let folks know that I received a Roman Catholic education from grades 1 to 13, mainly by nuns who wore similar garb. I also spoke to priests who told me that they removed their Roman Catholic collar when they were in Quebec because of some of the discrimination they felt. In that particular area there was a movement afoot to secularize society, especially in those areas. I was taught by a lay teacher who told me that she went to a school in the Upper Ottawa Valley, a separate school. The kids, when they walked home from school, had run-ins with the Protestant kids because they went to a separate school and not a public school.

My children were raised in a family where, at the dinner table, we made sure we didn't discriminate. When I hear comments across the table from other people, other politicians, who hint that this act has something to do with discrimination because of the way people look, I would point out that nowhere in it does it describe that. Canadians need to know, my constituents need to know, that when it comes to bigotry and discrimination, it's an equal opportunity evil. It sees no colour, it sees no race. This act has nothing to do with that. And if anyone says that, I would say there are motivations behind it.

We hear from lawyers. Lawyers will take up the cause for people because they believe in it. Some lawyers are saying this is discrimination and it's bad. Other lawyers have come before this committee and said....

So you're entitled to your opinion, but that does not necessarily make it correct. That's why we have a democracy. That's why we are here today. Please do not look at this and say, “Well, since the government of the day brought it in, they must be discriminatory against me”, or against any particular.... Nowhere in this act does it say so.

I just wanted to get that out of the way. I mean, I can describe discrimination: everybody in my family looks like me and everybody I'm talking about looks like me. I mentioned to another witness last night about the IRA, which was a terrorist organization trying to raise money in Canada, that today it would be classed as a terrorist organization. This has absolutely nothing to do with the colour of someone's skin, with the country they come from, but everything to do with who they are and what they want to do that is illegal. We're dealing specifically with terrorism here.

Mr. Bucci, having looked over your resumé, I think you're very well placed to discuss the need for reliable information to be received by the right people and at the right time. The first part of this legislation is about encouraging information that is relevant to national security, and that it be shared with national security agencies. In today's day and age, this is obviously critical.

Could you share your thoughts on the need for information sharing?

[Dr. Steven Bucci]

We learned very quickly that the lack of information sharing provides fundamental insecurity. We're not talking about gathering new information. As my colleague mentioned, it's information already resident, collected legally by different parts of the Canadian government. The inability to share that information is crazy.

Everybody always says, “Big data, my God, it's Big Brother coming in 1984.” You know, I'm sorry; big data is here. It operates on everything we do and it gives you an advantage.

Should there be oversight? Do you need to watch this stuff? Yes. But to try to say that we're not going to do it, and let's just put it aside, is a fool's errand. That information needs to be shared. We have the capability to share it accurately, to go through the multiple haystacks and find the needle, if we have the right amount of hay there. If you don't have all the hay in the stack, you're going to miss the needle. You do need to do that.

I agree; you have to do the information sharing. It's absolutely essential. You do need to make sure that the wrong information doesn't get in the wrong hands. But I think, reading this bill, it's people who own it legally, and they share it with people who have the authority to act on it for these specific issues, not helter-skelter for anything they want to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, but your time is up, Mr. Norlock.

We will now go to Mr. Garrison, please, for five minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for appearing this morning. It was an Interesting perspective from the Heritage Foundation from the U.S. I appreciate the testimony you gave this morning.

I also want to say that I have the written brief from CIJA. You have some very specific recommendations that we have not heard from other witnesses, in particular where you have recommended that the chair of SIRC be an officer of Parliament and provide regular reports to Parliament. I think that's a very practical and very important recommendation, so I thank you for bringing that to us.

I also want to say that I do understand the concerns you've expressed as a community that is very often subject to hate crimes and hate propaganda.

As I only have five minutes I'm going to restrict my questioning. I'm going to go to Mr. Mia from the Muslim Lawyers Association.

Could you talk a little bit about the connection between the purposes of this bill and the powers that are in it? Do you see a connection between the purposes as they're laid out and the powers?

[Ziyaad Mia]

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

As I mentioned in my opening, the title of the bill is the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, which would lead someone to believe that this is about terrorism. Certainly, if you look at the backgrounders on government websites that are promoting the legislation, and the public discussion by the Prime Minister and others, it's that this is about terrorism, a particular type of terrorism that we're going to challenge. That's fair enough, if that's what it's about, but when I downloaded and looked at it, it's certainly not about that topic.

Let's take for an example what I call SCISA, the security of Canada information sharing act. The definitional section, that's the foundational authority of that act, is about undermining the security of Canada, and then it has a long list, I think of about nine or ten items. Don't quote me on the number, but it's a long list. One of those items is terrorism, which, again, boggles my mind because terrorism is not a crime in the Criminal Code. It's terrorist activity and terrorist offences. I don't know, but there's a mismatch there. If lawyers at Justice are hearing that, you might want to clean that up because there's a mismatch. There's no such thing as terrorism as a crime.

That's an unlimited list. It's including all those things. There could be other things. So my question is who adds to that list? It's so broad ranging that, again, it could capture unlawful but peaceful activities. So if you're protesting and walking down a road, yes, you may be trespassing and need to be charged with that but you don't need to be dragged into the national security dragnet. That's the concern. It becomes a broad national security bill about undermining the security of Canada.

Then if you look at clause 5, all of government can share all of its information in this pool of 17 agencies. As Mr. Bucci said, big data's here. Yes, it is. This is lawful information the Government of Canada has and they'll be sharing it with these 17 agencies. But my disagreement with Mr. Bucci, respectfully, is that it's not just that, but the mandate. How did they first collect that information? Now they're sharing it for another purpose.

Secondly, big data is not a bogeyman and, yes, businesses do it. But when governments do it, it can be dangerous. Ed Snowden has told us that. It's the derivative work when you take pieces of disparate information, and work them through algorithms into predictive analysis. President Obama said that metadata is nothing. If you know a little bit about your phone, metadata is something. It's disingenuous to say it's existing information. It's derivative information as well.

So clause 6 totally disconnects the act. Clause 6 regarding information sharing, I believe, is unconstitutional on its face. It says that you can share that information with anyone for any purpose—not for terrorism, not for undermining the security of Canada, but for any purpose. I want to know what those purposes are. Any logical law-making would say the purpose needs to connect to the powers.

This goes on. In the bill, CSIS's powers are about threats to the security of Canada, not about terrorism.